


Lights will guide you home

by ShariDeschain



Series: Super dorks [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Super Sons (Comics), Superman (Comics), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, Implied Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent, M/M, mentions of the Batfamily
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:19:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShariDeschain/pseuds/ShariDeschain
Summary: If there’s another universe, then let it be better than this one, let it be without mourning, without heartaches, without mistakes. Let it be without things left unsaid, without cowardice in the smallest things, without regrets. If there’s another universe, one that you can only see at night with closed eyes, then what the hell, let it be perfect.





	Lights will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this very angsty and very lovely prompt](https://unavenged-robin.tumblr.com/post/162717987393/i-absolutely-adore-your-damijon-work-and-couldnt).  
> Jon’s 16 here and Damian’s 19 and they’re both huge dorks, thank you very much.

It’s a long, boring, frustrating mission. And Jon knows Damian’s hating it as much as he is, even if Robin’s never going to admit it out loud because he was the one who choose it, so complaining about it now in Damian’s brain would be like admitting to a mistake, and of course mistakes are a thing that only happens to others.

Jon sighs and flies around the decrepit building one more time, monitoring Damian’s position with his x-ray vision. Once established that the place was empty, Jon had let Damian explore the inside of the building by himself as a punishment for his pride, but now he’s getting bored with the wait.

From the outside the building is shabby just as much as its surroundings, and doesn’t reflect Jon’s expectations of a cool criminal lair _at all_. Then again, the guy to whom it belongs to is equally, if not more lame.

For a start, he calls himself the Travelling Thief, which is already flimsy enough on its own, in Jon’s humble opinion. Add to it a flashy glittery costume, a monocle and a top hat, and you have the most embarrassing Arsène Lupin copycat Jon’s ever seen in his life.

Worst thing is they’ve been chasing after this guy for almost three weeks now and discovering his hideout is their biggest accomplishment so far, even if Jon can’t begin to phantom how a loser like that had managed to play them for so long. And yet, here they are.

“I found the stolen goods”, Damian says over the comm - which are completely useless to someone with Jon’s powers, but Superman himself has told him not to bother with the Bats because there’s just no way to win some arguments with them.

“Any trace of your friend?”, Jon asks, lazily flying around to scan the neighborhood. There isn’t much to see there either, only abandoned warehouses and a playground that has probably seen his last child before Jon was even born.

“He’s not my friend”, Damian snaps at him. “He’s _our case_.”

“Whatever, Batboy.”

Damian grumbles some insults of choice, and then there is silence for a few minutes.

“Damn.”

Jon stops in midair and locates Damian again. He’s in the basement now, where the real headquarters of the Travelling Thief are supposed to be.

“Something wrong?”

“Silent alarm. Just activated it”, Damian explains through gritted teeth. “No way he’s coming back here now. We have to find another place to ambush him.”

“Great”, Jon sighs. “I’m going to get married and we will still be chasing after this guy, I know it. I’ll just go ahead and tell my mom to save a piece of cake for him. He’ll be a part of the family at that point.”

“Stop whining”, Damian snarls. “There are a lot of his preparatory files here, if we study them they’ll give us everything we need to catch him.”

That’s even worse news for Jon, and he groans internally.

“...are you telling me that this is how we are going to spend our weekend?”

Damian haughtily scoffs at him.

“Right, because you had better plans for it anyway.”

“As a matter of fact I have”, Jon retorts, glancing down at his phone as it starts beeping. _Talk about timing_ , he thinks with a smile. “But since you obviously don’t, I suppose you can finish this one on your own? You know, call the police, make a copy of the files before they arrive and all of that? ‘Cause I’ve got a friend to meet.”

“Of course, I would never want to keep you from your social life, Kent”, Damian answers, sarcasm heavy in his voice. “I mean, it’s already lacking as it is.”

Jon rolls his eyes and simply ignores the bait. It’s a weak one anyway, compared to all the creative insults Damian’s thrown his way over the years.

“Sweet!”, he says instead, voice filled with not-so-fake cheerfulness. “See you later, Robin!”

“Whatever, Jonny boy.”

The last things he hears before sprinting towards the sky are Damian’s heavy sigh and the rustle of papers while he starts looking through the files.

-

He gets the call one hour later, while he’s in Metropolis, slurping down an ice cream and laughing with a bunch of school friends. He’s happy because his plans for the weekend are _great_ and he just can’t wait to put them into practice.

Then his cellphone starts ringing and his father’s number comes up on the screen.

“Hey dad!”, Jon greets him, still in the middle of a laugh.

“Jonathan.”

That one word is enough to freeze Jon on his feet. He knows that tone, he knows that voice. Something’s wrong. 

Really, really wrong.

The conversation lasts less than a minute, and Jon doesn’t understand his father’s words right away, but Clark says _Damian_ and _accident_ and _you need to come back right now_ , so Jon runs and then he jumps and then he flies, and the whole time he feels like every inch of his insides is padded with cotton, and the only two words he can think about are _Damian_ and _accident_. Damian. Accident.

Accident.

Damian.

_Damian._

-

There’s nothing left of the building he and Damian were checking out a little more than one hour ago.

Not even debris under which they can dig. There’s _nothing_.

Jon stands in midair, clouds of dust and ashes swirling his cape around him as he stares down at the giant, big, black hole on the ground without understanding.

“The explosion wiped out the whole area”, his father explains. “We don’t know what provoked it or where Robin was when it happened but-”

Superman is not talking to him. He’s talking to Damian’s family. Jon’s pretty sure none of them has yet noticed him hovering above them, which is surprising, but not really, because if they’re all here it means that they’re assuming the worst, and the worst is-

Jon lands a few feet from them, and still no one acknowledges him.

Batman is silent. So very silent. Nightwing’s yelling. Red Hood’s yelling too. Jon doesn’t understand if they’re yelling at each other or at someone else. Red Robin is silent too, but now he’s looking right at Jon with an intensity that even the cowl can’t hide. Again, Jon doesn’t understand.

So he approaches them, walking on wobbly feet.

“Where is Damian?”, he asks, and he realizes there’s anger in his voice only after the words roll out of his mouth. But he’s angry, yes. Because it’s ridiculous for them to be all here. If Damian’s injured someone should be _with him_. Who cares about the Travelling Thief, about their mission or the burned things? He knows that the bats are one big, freaky, emotionally stunted lot, but he also knows that underneath all of that they _care,_ so why are they all here? Why did they leave Damian alone?

 _“Where is Damian?”_ , he asks again, louder and angrier, and everybody finally turn towards him.

There’s something on their faces. Under their masks. Jon recognizes it as he recognized his father’s urgence when he called his name over the phone.

And still, he doesn’t understand.

Refuses to.

But his scream broke the spell, and now everyone’s moving, reacting, ready to answer his question. Red Robin is the first to speak.

“Where is Damian?”, Tim repeats, voice half choked by a growl.

Jon focusses on him and Tim looks back with burning eyes, and Jon finally figures out the emotion behind his glare. It’s hatred. Pure and simple. And this much, at least, he can understand. Because it’s nothing new. Because he knows that Tim looks at him, looks at _Superboy_ and doesn’t see Jon. He sees Kon. He sees his absence.

“Where is _Damian_? Where the hell were _you_!”, Tim yells, taking a step towards him. “Why weren’t you with him? You were supposed to protect him!”

And Jon’s never thought of himself as Damian’s protector before, not really, but again, he understands what Tim means. If he’d been with Damian, he would’ve shielded him with his body. This entire thing would’ve been solved with a burned shirt and maybe a few cuts instead of… this.

Jon feels sick.

“ _Where the hell were you_?”, Tim asks again, almost but not quite yelling, cold rage dripping from his every word, and then Batman reaches out and grabs him by his shoulder, pulling him back.

“Enough”, Bruce growls.

 _It is_ enough, Jon realizes as he falls on his knees. It is enough for his brain to click and provide an answer to his question. He tastes the acid flavor of vomit in the back of his throat for the first time in years, before buckling forwards and spill the inside of his stomach on the ground, splattering both Batman’s and Red Robin’s boots with what used to be a double vanilla and chocolate ice cream mixed up with the remains of his last lunch.

-

He’s not sure about what time it is when he finds himself stumbling along the corridors of the Watchtower. He’s exhausted, though. They’ve been interrogating him for hours - and of course they were as gentle as they could’ve been, and they never called it an interrogation in the first place, but things are what they are, and as gentle as Bruce Wayne can try to be, he is the goddamn Batman, and at some point Jon broke up and started to cry, and from that moment on he doesn’t really remember much.

He’s sure he’s given them everything he knew about the Travelling Thief, but Damian had all the files about the case and Damian is-

Well.

He keeps walking for another undefined amount of time, until he turns a corner and unexpectedly finds Tim sitting cross-legged against a wall, unfocused eyes looking out the panoramic windows.

He’s still wearing his costume, but his domino lies forgotten at his feet, alongside his bo staff. He’s bathed in a deep red halo, and it takes Jon a moment to figure out it’s the sunset light covering him with a sanguine layer, and not some freaky figment of his own imagination drowning everything in blood.

Tim notices him but doesn’t say anything, so Jon walks towards him with heavy steps, then he stops, reaches into the front pocket of his jeans and drops two tickets into his lap. Tim blinks up at him, then he glances down at the tickets and picks them up to examine them closer.

“I went to get these”, Jon starts explaining, voice soft and careful, refusing to look at anywhere else than the floor. “There’s a concert this saturday, it’s a band Damian and I like a lot. It went sold out before I even realized they were in town, but a kid at my school managed to snatch a couple of tickets and agreed to give them to me, but I had to hurry, you know? Because there were other people who wanted ‘em and I… what _I_ wanted was to ask Damian… I thought it could be…”

Tim’s laugh interrupts his rambling. Surprised, startled out of a justification he doesn’t even know if he should try to give, Jon looks up at him with a quizzical glare, but Tim just keeps laughing, and it’s a wet, pained, humorless laugh.

He only stops when he realizes Jon’s staring at him, then he sniffles and looks at him with a smile so sad it looks like his face is breaking.

“Two days ago Damian asked me to find him a couple of tickets for the same concert”, Tim explains. “And, I suspect, for the same reason.”

“Oh”, Jon says. And then, before he has even the time to ponder on why the hell he should care about the answer, he asks: “And did you get them?”

“Yes”, Tim’s smile breaks with a sob, and then there are tears on his face, and Jon’s cheeks feel pretty wet too. “Of course I did. Gave him hell for it, though.”

The last sentence is more out of Jon’s interpretation than anything, because Tim’s crying too hard now to be intelligible. It doesn’t really matter anyway.

Jon slumps down on the ground beside him, and thinks about how Tim is the closest link he’s ever had to Kon, this amazing older brother he never got to meet. He wonders if Tim knows. Jon’s not sure he’ll ever care enough to tell him. 

Right now he throws his arms around Tim’s neck, presses his face into Tim’s shoulder and cries as hard as he knows how, all of it while he pretends it’s his dead brother hugging him back instead of the very alive brother of his probably dead boyfriend.

-

No one uses the word _dead_.

 _Missing_ is how people refer to Damian in the following days, and Jon has a feeling that if anybody fucked up and accidentally used the word _dead_ instead, they’d find themselves at the short end of one of the Bats’ temper.

No one uses the word _boyfriend_ either, not to define Damian’s relationship to Jon when they talk about them. Which is kind of fair, since neither Damian or Jon ever got to use that word before. It's all syntax anyway. Who cares.

To Jon is inconsequential.

He doesn’t speak of Damian at all.

-

He wakes up in the middle of the night to the almost forgotten but still familiar sounds of the countryside.

When he said he wanted to move back to their old house in Hamilton for a few days, his parents had begged him not to, but they didn’t really do anything to actually stop him from doing it anyway, probably because they understood more than anybody else the need of solitude for someone like him in a situation like this. 

So his father had hugged his mother tight to his side and they both had kissed him on the forehead before letting him go. Jon was grateful to both of them.

He misses them now, while he lies in the dark of their old bedroom, but at the same time he’s glad to be alone, to not have to share his anger and his night terrors with anyone.

He gets up from the bed to open the window and let the cold air freeze the sweat running down his back, let it cool down his flushed face.

Outside only dark meadows already wet with dew, the rich smell of the earth in the summer, and a black sheet of sky dotted with stars.

He’s grown to love Metropolis for its own beauty, but nothing, _nothing_ , can compare with this in eyes.

 _“Because this is home, Jonathan”_ , his father had said long time ago, when Jon was still heartbroken about the moving. _“There’s never going to be something as beautiful as this is for you right now, and that’s okay. It’s good to have something beautiful to come back to.”_

He was right, of course. Home is a beautiful thing. Even without your parents, and all your animals, and the smell of apple pie in the kitchen, and a once-upon-a-time little bat hanging upside down from the highest branch of the chestnut tree outside your bedroom. Home is good even when your head is empty of thoughts and your heart is heavy with regrets and you have run out of tears. Home is always home.

So Jon sits on the windowsill, bare feet dangling in the night, nose up to look at the stars, and he enjoys the emotions of feeling at home for a while.

It’s while he’s looking at the sky that he realizes: today is saturday. Today is the night of the concert.

Right now, in another universe, he’s standing in a large crowd, singing and jumping on his feet, Damian’s fingers wrapped around his own. They are both covered in sweat, and Damian’s pretending to be annoyed by all the people around them and complaining that the music's too loud, but his lips taste of salt and illicit beer when Jon kisses him, and he’s smiling, he’s _happy_ , they’re happy, and they have four tickets instead of two, since they were both too stubborn to ask first, so maybe Tim and Kon are with them, because why the hell not, honestly?

If there’s another universe, then let it be better than this one, let it be without mourning, without heartaches, without mistakes. Let it be without things left unsaid, without cowardice in the smallest things, without regrets. If there’s another universe, one that you can only see at night with closed eyes, then what the hell, let it be perfect. 

-

“Are you sure you’re okay? Do you have food? Clean clothes? Toothpaste?”

Jon smiles into his pillow.

“Yes, mom, I promise I’m fine.”

He’s not _fine,_ obviously. But Lois knows that. She’s just fussing a little bit without pushing too hard, just to remind Jon that she’s there, always.

“Bruce’s still looking”, she informs him gently. “So is your dad.”

Jon doesn’t say anything. Lois promptly cover the silence with news from his school. She’s not fretting about it because it will be over in less than a week anyway, and he’s not missing out on anything important, but Jon thinks she’s also trying to keep him grounded, to tell him without using those exact words that life goes on.

And Jon wants to say that he knows that. That he just wants to forget it for a little while.

_Bruce’s still looking. So is your dad._

It’s been only three days.

Already three days.

After he closes the call he rolls on his side and goes right back to sleep.

-

He feels it coming, even in his sleep.

But it’s just that: a feeling, and Jon’s just too tired to actually care enough to get out of the bed.

The thing, however, doesn’t leave him much of a choice when it decides to come crashing down right into the living room’s windows. The sound of breaking glass is almost deafening in the silence of the night, and Jon’s on his feet before he even realizes to be awake.

Also, he knows he’s seen too many bad movies when he finds himself instinctively looking around the room for a baseball bat to wield against the intruders.

 _What the hell, Jonny boy_ , a voice that is not his own swears in his mind.

“What the hell indeed”, Jon mutters.

He doesn’t really need the lights more than he needs a baseball bat, but he turns them on anyway when he reaches the hallway. Whoever it is, be it a thief or a wandering animal, Jon doesn’t want to startle them, or give away too much about himself either, since he’s not wearing his costume. A nice growl should be enough to scare away anything or anyone in there anyway. Or so he thinks.

At first, it doesn’t make sense, maybe because he takes everything in in one instant: the crunching of the glass under his bare feet, the burning smell of something on fire, the cold wind coming in through the broken windows, the green glowing of a weird looking bike crashed into his couch, the two tangled figures in the middle of the room, the glimpses of red and purple under a black blanket, heavy breathing and two erratic heartbeats.

Then there is a short, choked moan, and one of the figures moves, propping themselves up on one elbow. The black and gold cape slips away and of course Jon already knew, he knew since the moment he heard his heartbeat, recognized it right away while he was still coming down the stairs because how could he _not_ recognize it after all these years?, and yet his brain refused to formulate the thought, to lift the heavy fog of his mourning and allow him the hope, refused him the sheer reality of what he’s seeing right now until Damian raises his head and a green eye settles on Jon from behind the broken lens of his domino mask.

And he… smiles. He’s covered in blood and looks like he’s been dragged through hell and back, and yet, Damian looks at Jon and he _smiles_.

“Hey, Jonny boy.”

His voice is soft and scratchy and tired, but still somewhat amused, and Jon is at his side in less than an instant, pushing away the second figure from his back and barely realizing that it’s no other than their lame Traveling Thief, unconscious and showcasing a couple of bruises the size of Damian’s fists, but otherwise untouched. For now.

“Damian”, Jon allows himself to call his name while he helps him rolling on his back. His hands are shaking, his head is full of cotton again, and he doesn’t even have the time to realize he should be happy, because Damian is _alive_ and _here_ and _alive_ , but Damian also doesn’t look good _at all,_ and Jon needs to do something right now, and at the same time he’s thinking _how_ and _you bastard_ , and he doesn’t know what to do. “Just- just stay put, I’ll call my dad, _our dads_ , or, or the hospital, I can carry you to the hospital right now, I can-”

A gloved hand encircles his wrist, but Jon barely feels the ruined rubber scratching against his skin. It’s the way Damian’s looking at him that makes him snap out of his ramblings.

“Don’t.”

Jon blinks, shifts on his knees and leans a little more towards Damian. His own heartbeat is frantic, compared to Damian’s slower one. It should be the other way around, Jon thinks, he should be the calm, collected one, he should be the one handling the situation better.

“Don’t what?”, he asks, and he feels stupid. He should just snatch Damian up and fly back to Gotham, he should scream for his father and he would be here in less than a minute, and he would know what to do, but _Damian is here_ , _Damian is alive_ , and his brain is still processing that information.

“Don’t call anyone. I’m fine, I’m-”, Damian coughs, and his face twists in pain and exhaustion. “I just need rest. Please. Don’t call anyone.”

Rest doesn’t fix cuts and dislocated shoulders on its own, that Jon knows of. But he looks over and over again and doesn’t find anything worse on Damian, nothing life-threatening, only dried off blood and little scratches. 

He shifts again, and settles Damian’s head on his lap, brushing sweaty strands of hair out of his eyes.

 _How_ , Jon wants to ask. _How are you here, why did it take so much for you to come back, where were you all this time._

 _(Where the hell were you?_ , Tim screams again into his mind, but now it’s not the moment for that.)

“They all believe you’re dead”, he tells him instead, because he has this funny feeling that Damian’s not understanding how serious this situation is. “Your father, your brothers, I can’t- Damian please, I need to call them, they need to know.”

The sound Damian makes in response is very similar to a scoff, but Jon can’t be sure of it. What he’s sure of, is that Damian’s relaxing into his arms, his expression softened, his eyelids already half-closed.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”, Jon repeats with a frown.

“Please?”

That’s always a weird word coming from Damian’s mouth. But it’s not the _please_ , it’s the question mark at the end that really pulls at Jon’s heart. Because it sounds like begging, and Damian doesn’t beg. Ever.

“Okay”, he agrees mechanically. “Okay. Tomorrow.”

Batman is going to break his killing rule only for him, but okay. Because Damian asked. That’s what it matters right now. _Damian is here_ , _Damian is alive_ , and Damian is asking him for a favor that’s probably going to get Jon killed in at least four different ways by four different people, but okay. Tomorrow. Because apparently there’s going to be a tomorrow with Damian in it. Jon smiles.

Satisfied with his capitulation, Damian smiles back before his lashes flutter again and he starts falling down into a heavy slumber.

His face is covered in dust and sweat and blood crusts, his lips are dry and split, and yet that smile, as brief and tired and mocking as it is, still manages to be the most beautiful thing Jon’s ever seen. And that’s probably why he doesn’t even have the presence of mind to get angry at him like he maybe should. Instead he just tangles his fingers in Damian’s hair, presses their foreheads together, and keeps smiling.

-

The thought of moving Damian into a bed only occurs to him after half an hour or so, and only because he feels someone moving behind him. Incidentally, that’s also when Jon remembers that he and Damian are not alone in the room.

Careful not to disturb Damian, who’s still lying on the floor with his head settled on Jon’s lap, he turns towards the second figure and quickly assesses his conditions again. Everything considered, their thief is even in better shape than Damian is, which is not necessarily good for him at this point.

“If you are smart and you care about your well-being, then you’re going to be very quiet”, Jon says under his breath, as the man starts regain consciousness. “Try to run, try to attack us, and I’ll get mad. Very mad. You understand?”

Since the only two sources of light are the lamps in the hallway and the glowing bike currently crashed into his couch, the room is still dark enough for human eyes to be only barely able of distinguishing shapes from the shadows, so the man immediately turns towards them but he makes the mistake of not answering right away.

Jon’s eyes glow red and a hole the size of a finger appears just an inch to the right from the thief’s head.

“Do you understand?”, Jon repeats again.

This time the man is quick at nodding back.

“I’ll take him upstairs”, Jon explains without breaking eye contact, arms curling protectively around Damian’s body. “If you move even one finger, I’ll know. I’ll come back and I’ll hurt you.”

And despite Damian’s teasing, Jon’s apparently decent enough too at intimidating people, since the man looks like he’d stop breathing too, if he only could. Which is great. Because Jon means every word he’s just said.

“Good.”

Jon looks back at Damian’s face and sighs, knowing that he’s gonna pay for it one way or the other. Still, he moves one hand behind Damian’s back, the other under his knees, and he cradles Robin’s still form against his chest while he stands up.

Damian mutters something under his breath, but he doesn’t wake up, and out of some only-god-knows-for-how-long forgotten instinct, he mechanically moves to hook an arm around his neck, shifting until his face is pressed against Jon’s throat, so close that he can feel his breath warming up his cheek.

 _You were supposed to protect him_ , Tim had said, and it had taken Jon by surprise. Maybe because Damian had always been the oldest, the most confident, the one that usually knew (or was very good at pretending to know) what needed to be done to get them out of trouble, but whatever the reason, Jon had - stupidly enough - never thought of their partnership in terms of protecting one another. Helping, sure, supporting, of course, looking out for each other was such a given it never really needed to be spoken of, but protecting? It sounded weird back then. 

But right now, while he climbs up the stairs to carry Damian into his bedroom, it also sounds very right.

-

Jon doesn’t know his way around the Robin’s suit very well, so he only removes the broken domino and the gauntlets before start working on Damian’s boots. It takes him ten minutes straight to undo the shoe laces alone, and then some time more to slip them off Damian’s feet. He has no idea on how Damian manages to change into his costume so fast when he has these traps to deal with on a daily basis.

Robin’s utility belt zaps him when Jon tries to untie it. Having run out of patience, he laser-eyes it back in retaliation. The entire costume is probably going into the trash anyway, so he doesn’t feel too guilty about it. And if Damian has his own opinion about it, he doesn’t let Jon know, just grunts and shifts a little more on his left side, lifting up some weight from his damaged shoulder.

Right, there’s also that.

With a heavy sigh, Jon sits on the bed next to Damian and cups both sides of his shoulder with his hands, locking his fingers just above it. He’s done it dozens of times by now, and Damian’s definitely had worse in his life, still he frowns and grits his teeth in sympathy when he pushes his palms together and settles the bone back into its socket with a loud pop.

As expected Damian jolts awake with a gasp, and his eyes snap open as he instinctively starts looking around for his attacker.

“Sssh, Damian it’s okay, it’s just me, don’t move”, Jon urges him, hands pushing lightly against his chest to keep him down on the bed.

Damian’s eyes flutter and he gives him a confused look.

“Jon?”

“Yeah”, Jon confirms, then he slips him some painkillers and a sip of water to swallow it down before Damian has the time to completely wake up and start complaining about not needing any drugs.

Truth to be told, even in his dizzy state of mind, Damian does manage to give him a dirty glare for his troubles, but he must also be quite tired of playing the superhero for the night, because he leaves it just at that.

He doesn’t even protest when Jon settles him more comfortably against the pillow. He just looks around the room with a confused stare.

“Where-”

“My old house in Hamilton”, Jon answers promptly. “You crashed through my window a little more than an hour ago, don’t you remember?”

“Hmn”, Damian answers non-committally. Then his hands twitch and he tries to push himself up again.

“Nope”, Jon says, keeping him easily pinned down.

“The Traveling Thief-”

“He’s downstairs and not going anywhere. Is that really your first concern?”, Jon asks, and he’d like to say he’s incredulous, but the truth is he knows his partner good enough not to be surprised in the slightest, not even about the almost offended look Damian gives him in response.

“I got him. Held on him for- what time is it?”

“Around midnight, I think”, and then, because he’s not sure if Damian’s been keeping up with the time at all, he adds: “It’s Sunday, by the way. Well, Monday, by now.”

And finally, _finally_ , Damian seems to pause and actually try to focus on the matter at hand.

“I was gone almost five days?”, he asks, not bothering to hide his surprise.

Jon’s fingers dig a little bit harder into Damian’s skin as he bites his bottom lip.

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

 _That’s all you have to say?_ , Jon wants to ask, but to be honest, he probably wouldn’t know what to say either if their role were reversed. Also it’s quite obvious that Damian’s not totally in his right mind yet - the painkillers mustn’t be helping in the slightest about that - and Jon really, really wants to go easy on him, but.

“Damian?”

“Mh?”

“How did you survive it?”, he asks, because he _has_ to. “The explosion, I mean. Do you remember that?”

Damian blinks hazy, half-lidded eyes, then he clicks his tongue in what looks like equal parts anger and shame.

“Tripped on a booby-trapped wire”, he scoffs. “Stupid.”

Jon shakes his head.

“It wasn’t stupid.”

“Was too. I made one mistake after another. Activated both an alarm and a trap, like the worst amateur. Didn’t even noticed-”

“You didn’t make a mistake”, Jon interrupts him and Damian looks at him with a frown.

“I just told you I made several. I’m not-”

“I should’ve been there!”, Jon yells, cutting him off. “That was the only mistake! I should’ve been there with you!”

The high pitch of his voice makes the room ring around them. Damian’s eyes widen in bewilderment, and Jon immediately regrets his outburst. But the words had been stuck in his throat for so long, and hearing Damian accusing himself was just too much for him to keep them under control any longer.

“I’m sorry”, the words keep rolling out of his mouth and Jon just lets them. “It was my fault and I’m sorry. We thought you were dead, your family and my dad, and I just, I just should’ve been there to protect you and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. But now you’re back and I- and I-”

And then, without meaning it in the slightest, he starts crying again. Because apparently he can’t do anything else these days. The most powerful boy on Earth, and all he can do is shake with sobs and bawl his eyes out. What a failure.

“Jon…”

Damian has really no idea on what to say, Jon knows that. Which is okay, because there’s nothing Jon really wants to listen to, right now. So he bows his head against Damian’s chest and tries to limit the sobs the best he can.

It’s weird, being so happy and so desperate at the same time. It gets even weirder when the palm of Damian’s hand hesitantly brushes against the crown of his head, fingers digging gently into Jon’s hair. And Jon may not feel comfortable with playing the protector in their relationship, but Damian sure as hell feels even less comfortable with being the comforting one. Which he shouldn’t be anyway, because once again Jon’s been selfish and letting him take care of the situation when it should be him the strong one right now. Useless, he’s _useless._

But the strangest thing in all of this is that Damian doesn’t complain, doesn’t tell him to man up and stop acting like a baby, he just keeps… petting him. Like he would do with Titus, probably. The thought makes Jon laugh and he shakes harder against Damian’s chest, sobs and barks of laughter mixed up together into one wet, pathetic, childish mess.

“He was there, by the way”, Damian continues after a moment, voice soft and uncertain, because apparently he’s unwilling to let Jon’s sobs be the loudest sound in the room. Jon’s okay with that. “The Traveling Thief. Appeared the moment I activated the silent alarm. The glowing bicycle - it’s called _the_ _Garimard_ by the way, can you believe it? - that’s why we couldn’t catch him. The engine has a technology based on particles acceleration, so it travels almost at light speed. That’s also how I avoided blowing up, to answer your question. I grabbed onto it once I realized he’d set up a self-destruction device in the basement. He wasn’t too happy about it.”

Still in the middle of his breakdown, Jon chokes back a sob and snorts weakly into the fabric of the Robin’s costume.

“Can’t say I’m sorry for him.”

“Me neither”, Damian agrees. “Is he still downstairs by the way?”

“Yup”, Jon confirms with a sniff full of vindictive pleasure. “I told you, he will not move.”

Damian nods, then he continues his recount like he would with a patrol’s report at the end of a difficult night. “I knocked him out after the explosion pushed us away, then I tried putting some coordinates into the drive system, but it must’ve been damaged by the fire because after the first jump we kept ending up in the strangest places.”

It takes Jon a few second to elaborate what Damian’s just said.

“For five days? You kept jumping around the world for five days without stopping once?”, he asks, raising his head to look at him, and he’s so taken aback from the idea to stop crying at once. “Forget the explosion, how did you survive _that_?”

“With my superior training, of course”, Damian answers, and he’s only half sarcastic about it, _of course_. “Also, time was… weird. I think it worked differently on that thing. I couldn’t really _feel_ it, if that makes sense.”

“Not really”, Jon answers honestly. He dries his face with the back of his hand, then slips an arm over Damian’s chest and rests his cheek on it. “How did you end up here anyway?”

Damian shrugs under him, then he yawns, and his eyes begin to close again.

“For the most of the time I was busy with trying to prevent the lame thief and myself from falling down the bike, but I also kept putting into the system various coordinates of places I knew. I guess for some reason these ones actually stuck.”

“For some reason”, Jon repeats.

“Mh.”

It’s comfortable where he is, Jon realizes. Well, not for his back, or his legs, and definitely not for his neck, but he feels good anyway, with his head on Damian’s chest and Damian’s hand between his hair. So he closes his eyes too and listens to Damian’s breath. He promises himself that once it evens out he’s gonna go downstair to have a chat with their- well, their hostage at this point, and then he will debate with himself if is really smart to keep the Batman in the dark about the return of his son for an entire night.

He falls asleep on top of Damian without even realizing it.

-

He sleeps until dawn, and he knows where and next to who he is the same instant he regains consciousness, and still his first instinct is to raise his head and look around to make sure that it wasn’t a dream, that Damian’s really here.

He finds him still in deep sleep, lying on the bed just next to him, his features completely relaxed for once, to the point he’s even drooling a little. The drugs and the five days exhaustion have definitely got the best of him, which is a good thing in Jon’s book, since in the daylight Damian looks a lot worse than he thought the night before.

It’s still fine, though. Damian’s alive, and that’s what really matters.

Jon gets out of the bed and for the first time in five days there isn’t the burden of a devastating grief weighing down on his chest. He can breathe just fine. For a moment it’s really confusing. Then he looks down at Damian and decides that the emotional mess can wait. Breakfast first.

-

It’s way past lunch time when Damian makes his way down the stairs and into the kitchen. Jon’s okay with it. He’s spent the entire morning sitting on the porch, waiting, rethinking the last night as well as the last week in general, with the Traveling Thief, now tied to a rocking chair, awkwardly trying to keep him company. It was surreal.

Damian appears in the doorway smelling like Jon’s shampoo, hair still wet from a long and well deserved shower, and he gives them both an amused glare but doesn’t comment further.

So there’s this weird silence between all of them, and Jon looks at Damian while he clears his throat, struggling to find something to say, and he wonders if despite the drugs and the tiredness Damian’s remembering the night before too, if he’s embarrassed for it on Jon’s behalf. But if that was the case, he’d be coming up with a new insulting nickname at this point.

“Hey, Jonny boy”, Damian says instead after a few more moments, because apparently that’s the best he can do. But Jon shakes his head as he gets up on his feet and walks towards him.

“Nope”, he says. “Not this time.”

So he reaches out and he engulfs Damian in a hug almost strong enough to crush him. To his credit, Damian seemed to be already resigned for something like this to happen and he obviously braced himself in advance for it.

“Ribs”, Damian warns him anyway, but at the same time he wraps his arms around Jon with almost the same eagerness, if not with the same strength.

And it’s not the first hug they’ve ever shared, but there is some kind of awareness now in their touch, something that’s been there for some time now, but that was never acknowledged before. And Jon is tired too, happy and relieved, but so, so tired, and he’s not really thinking straight while he buries his face into Damian’s shoulder and sags into the embrace, welcoming the warmth in his stomach even as he feels the flush rising up to his face.

“I love you”, he whispers then into Damian’s neck.

And it wasn’t supposed to go like this. Before those words there should’ve been a first date, to see if things really worked out under that perspective, and then a second and a third and a fourth, and at least a kiss, maybe some touching, definitely more time spent together, a few tries, some good thinking, some doubts on the where and when to say something so important for the first time. No, it wasn’t supposed to come out of his mouth on its own, in the middle of an empty kitchen, with a lame thief as a witness, and seemingly so out of the blue.

And yet, even in forced retrospect, all those preparations sound like bullshit anyway. Because Jon knows already that he loves Damian, and the dates, the physical touches, the time, none of that would add anything to it. He loves him right now, he’ll love him tomorrow and for the times to come, so why hide it behind a _maybe_ or a _let’s see what happens_?

And he’s not really waiting for an answer either, or a reaction, but he braces himself for it anyway when he feels Damian shifting his weight on his feet, and then his arms tightening around him.

“That’s not very smart of you”, Damian comments. Which is not a _I love you too_ , but neither a _what the hell_ , so Jon laughs against Damian’s neck and considers it a win because at least Damian knows, has probably known for some time too, the same way Jon knew, and that’s enough, at least for now.

It feels natural then, it feels just right, to pull himself back a bit to meet Damian’s eyes. It feels good to kiss him, to move one hand to the back of his head and the other around his waist to press their bodies closer together, hot skin against hot skin, tastes of blood and toothpaste on the tips of their tongues.

When Damian pulls back is only because he’s short of breath, and even then he doesn’t back off the whole way, but leans down to press his forehead against Jon’s, lips still brushing against the corner of Jon’s mouth.

“The lowlife is watching”, Damian whispers then, and he’s smiling, and Jon has to laugh because of course, why did he even bothered with imagining a normal first date for the two of them.

“Who cares”, he answers, still laughing. “Let him watch.”

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t write an ending to save my life ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> Also this wasn’t supposed to be this long or this mushy but my hand kinda slipped, I guess.
> 
> (Oh, and the Travelling Thief definitely gets an invite to their wedding. He can't partecipate, of course, because he's in prison and what not, but you know, it was a lovely thought anyway.)


End file.
